Part 242 (1/2)

Secede, then, from the government. Submit to its exactions, but pay it no allegiance, and give it no voluntary aid. Fill no offices under it. Send no senators or representatives to the National or State legislature; for what you cannot conscientiously perform yourself, you cannot ask another to perform as your agent. Circulate a declaration of DISUNION FROM SLAVEHOLDERS, throughout the country. Hold ma.s.s meetings--a.s.semble in conventions--nail your banners to the mast!

Do you ask what can be done, if you abandon the ballot box? What did the crucified Nazarene do without the elective franchise? What did the apostles do? What did the glorious army of martyrs and confessors do? What did Luther and his intrepid a.s.sociates do? What can women and children do? What has Father Matthew done for teetotalism? What has Daniel O'Connell done for Irish repeal? ”Stand, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness,” and arrayed in the whole armor of G.o.d!

The form of government that shall succeed the present government of the United States, let time determine. It would he a waste of time to argue that question, until the people are regenerated and turned from their iniquity. Ours is no anarchical movement, but one of order and obedience. In ceasing from oppression, we establish liberty. What is now fragmentary, shall in due time be crystallized, and s.h.i.+ne like a gem set in the heavens, for a light to all coming ages.

Finally--we believe that the effect of this movement will be,--First, to create discussion and agitation throughout the North; and these will lead to a general perception of its grandeur and importance.

Secondly, to convulse the slumbering South like an earthquake, and convince her that her only alternative is, to abolish slavery, or be abandoned by that power on which she now relies for safety.

Thirdly, to attack the slave power in its most vulnerable point, and to carry the battle to the gate.

Fourthly, to exalt the moral sense, increase the moral power, and invigorate the moral const.i.tution of all who heartily espouse it.

We reverently believe that, in withdrawing from the American Union, we have the G.o.d of justice with us. We know that we have our enslaved countrymen with us. We are confident that all free hearts will be with us. We are certain that tyrants and their abettors will be against us.

In behalf of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society,

WM. LLOYD GARRISON, _President_.

WENDELL PHILLIPS, }_Secretaries_.

MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN, }

Boston, May 20, 1844.

LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON.

BOSTON, 4th July, 1844.

_To His Excellency George N. Briggs:_

SIR--Many years since, I received from the Executive of the Commonwealth a commission as Justice of the Peace. I have held the office that it conferred upon me till the present time, and have found it a convenience to myself, and others. It might continue to be so, could I consent longer to hold it. But paramount considerations forbid, and I herewith transmit to you my commission, respectfully asking you to accept my resignation.

While I deem it a duty to myself to take this step, I feel called on to state the reasons that influence me.

In entering upon the duties of the office in question, I complied with the requirements of the law, by taking an oath ”_to support the Const.i.tution of the United States_.” I regret that I ever took that oath. Had I then as maturely considered its full import, and the obligations under which it is understood, and meant to lay those who take it, as I have done since, I certainly never would have taken it, seeing, as I now do, that the Const.i.tution of the United States contains provisions calculated and intended to foster, cherish, uphold and perpetuate _slavery_. It pledges the country to guard and protect the slave system so long as the slaveholding States choose to retain it. It regards the slave code as lawful in the States which enact it.

Still more, ”it has done that, which, until its adoption, was never before done for African slavery. It took it out of its former category of munic.i.p.al law and local life; adopted it as a national inst.i.tution, spread around it the broad and sufficient s.h.i.+eld of national law, and thus gave to slavery a national existence.” Consequently, the oath to support the Const.i.tution of the United States is a solemn promise to do that which is morally wrong; that which is a violation of the natural rights of man, and a sin in the sight of G.o.d.

I am not in this matter, const.i.tuting myself a judge of others. I do not say that no honest man can take such an oath, and abide by it. I only say, that _I_ would not now deliberately take it; and that, having inconsiderately taken it; I can no longer suffer it to lie upon my soul. I take back the oath, and ask you, sir, to receive back the commission, which was the occasion of my taking it.

I am aware that my course in this matter is liable to be regarded as singular, if not censurable; and I must, therefore, be allowed to make a more specific statement of those _provisions of the Const.i.tution_ which support the enormous wrong, the heinous sin of slavery.

The very first Article of the Const.i.tution takes slavery at once under its legislative protection, as a basis of representation in the popular branch of the National Legislature. It regards slaves under the description ”of all other _persons_”--as of only three-fifths of the value of free persons; thus to appearance undervaluing them in comparison with freemen. But its dark and involved phraseology seems intended to blind us to the consideration, that those underrated slaves are merely a _basis_, not the _source_ of representation; that by the laws of all the States where they live, they are regarded not as _persons_, but as _things_; that they are not the _const.i.tuency_ of the representative, but his property; and that the necessary effect of this provision of the Const.i.tution is, to take legislative power out of the hands of _men_, as such, and give it to the mere possessors of goods and chattels. Fixing upon thirty thousand persons, as the smallest number that shall send one member into the House of Representatives, it protects slavery by distributing legislative power in a free and in a slave State thus: To a congressional district in South Carolina, containing fifty thousand slaves, claimed as the property of five hundred whites, who hold, on an average, one hundred apiece, it gives one Representative in Congress; to a district in Ma.s.sachusetts containing a population of thirty thousand five hundred, one Representative is a.s.signed. But inasmuch as a slave is never permitted to vote, the fifty thousand persons in a district in Carolina form no part of ”the const.i.tuency;” _that_ is found only in the five hundred free persons. Five hundred freemen of Carolina could send one Representative to Congress, while it would take thirty thousand five hundred freemen of Ma.s.sachusetts, to do the same thing: that is, one slaveholder in Carolina is clothed by the Const.i.tution with the same political power and influence in the Representatives Hall at Was.h.i.+ngton, as sixty Ma.s.sachusetts men like you and me, who ”eat their bread in the sweat of their own brows.”

According to the census of 1830, and the _ratio_ of representation based upon that, slave property added twenty-five members to the House of Representatives. And as it has been estimated, (as an approximation to the truth,) that the two and a half million slaves in the United States are held as property by about two hundred and fifty thousand persons--giving an average of ten slaves to each slaveholder, those twenty-five Representatives, each chosen, at most by only ten thousand voters, and probably by less than three-fourths of that number, were the representatives not only of the two hundred and fifty thousand persons who chose them, but of property which, five years ago, when slaves were lower in market, than at present, were estimated, by the man who is now the most prominent candidate for the Presidency, at twelve hundred millions of dollars--a sum, which, by the natural increase of five years, and the enhanced value resulting from a more prosperous state of the planting interest, cannot now be less than fifteen hundred millions of dollars. All this vast amount of property, as it is ”peculiar,” is also identical in its character. In Congress, as we have seen, it is animated by one spirit, moves in one ma.s.s, and is wielded with one aim; and when we consider that tyranny is always timid, and despotism distrustful, we see that this vast money power would be false to itself, did it not direct all its eyes and hands, and put forth all its ingenuity and energy, to one end--self-protection and self-perpetuation. And this it has ever done.

In all the vibrations of the political scale, whether in relation to a Bank or Sub-Treasury, Free Trade or a Tariff, this immense power has moved, and will continue to move, in one ma.s.s, for its own protection.

While the weight of the slave influence is thus felt in the House of Representatives, ”in the Senate of the Union,” says JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, ”the proportion of slaveholding power is still greater. By the influence of slavery in the States where the inst.i.tution is tolerated, over their elections, no other than a slaveholder can rise to the distinction of obtaining a seat in the Senate; and thus, of the fifty-two members of the federal Senate, twenty-six are owners of slaves, and are as effectually representatives of that interest, as the eighty-eight members elected by them to the House”

The dominant power which the Const.i.tution gives to the slave interest, as thus seen and exercised in the _Legislative Halls_ of our nation, is equally obvious and obtrusive in every other department of the National government.